Enhanced 5G spectrum sharing using a new adaptive NC-OFDM waveform with reconfigurable antennas

This paper describes the design and simulated performance of a 5G-like spectrum sharing radio that uses both Non-Contiguous-Orthogonal Frequency Domain Modulated (NC-OFDM) waveform and an electrically Reconfigurable Alford Loop Antenna (RALA) to efficiently share spectrum with a co-channel IEEE 802.15.4, or ZigBee, radio link. We present a detailed performance analysis of Monte Carlo simulation trials of an indoor spectrum sharing scenario. A parametric statistical analysis shows that our new adaptive NC-OFDM subcarrier deactivation algorithm enables an enhanced NC-OFDM radio to share spectrum with a standard ZigBee commercial radio link at a short separation distance. The statistical improvement over the standalone and baseline case is presented.